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Field AdvantageA Commentary by Charles Miller"Over the years, I've gone through several
stages in considering the UFO and extraterrestrial inteligence
controversies, beginning as an ignoramus, then graduating to a
believer, then to a foamer (more in a moment), then to a cautious
believer, then to a hardened skeptic, then to a cautious skeptic, and
finally to an intermediatist." [full
text]From Mermaids to Little Green Men:
The Prehistory of the UFO Abduction Phenomenonby Jerry Clark"Does the available evidence sustain the
testimony of today's abductees that gray UFO beings were snatching
people up decades ago? The evidence is not overwhelming. On the other
hand, it is not entirely nonexistent."

Roper's Latest Tangle
The 1998 Abduction Surveyby Peter Brookesmith"What we are not told, and in view of the
abductologists' logic we really should be asking, is whether or not any
of the 12 people who claimd to have been abducted were among the 20 who
answered all five key questions positively, or even among the 48 who
answered four of them thus. Ufologists love to hurl accusations of
intellectual dishonesty at each other--pots also call kettles black, I
hear--but, not being a ufologist, I'll resist that temptation."

Breakout of the Fictions:
George Adamski's 1959 World Tourby Colin Bennett"Adamski's space-folk are pure Disney-schlock,
and their conversations have the mental content of a wrecked
supermarket trolley. At times we expect to see a portrait of Doris Day
and hear the piped Muzak of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir oozing from the
walls. The effect is perfect for that lavish spiritual kitsch which is
Theosophy."

Reading the Strangeness:
Second-Order Anomaliesby T. Peter Park
"On the night of November 2, 1967, several people unknown to
each other who had been drinking beer had very similar close encounters
on roads near Ririe, Idaho with "little men" from UFO's trying to
forcibly enter their cars. Almost exactly ten years earlier, on
November 6, 1957, spacemen from UFO's tried to steal dogs from a boy
named Everett in Tennessee and from a man in Everittstown, New Jersey.
Are such sets of events mere coincidences--or do they reflect deep
patterns with special meanings for their participants, or even for the
world at large?"

The Best UFO Case Ever?
A Review and Update of the Socorro Incidentby Patrick Huyghe
"Until policeman Lonnie Zamora's sighting made the news in 1964,
all other accounts of meetings with the space people came from
witnesses of dubious credibility and reputation. And their stories were
laughable. Zamora's story was different. He was a policeman, a
highly credible witness. So with this case, the widespread
feeling--even among UFO believers--that there was something absurd, if
not ludicrous, about humanoids, simply crumbled."What's Really Behind the Flying
Saucers?
A New Twist on Aztec
by Karl T. Pflock"Recently, under curious circumstances, I was
made privy to an fascinating document about one of the most
controversial cases of the Golden Age of Flying Saucers, the so-called
Aztec crash of 1949. Until the late seventies, this case was the
yardstick, for better or worse, by which ufology measured claims of
crashed, retrieved, and secreted-away saucers from outer space. I never
had all that much interest in the case until in 1998, when a source,
who insists on complete anonymity, showed me a handwritten testament,
set down by the key player in this amazing, often amusing,
truth-is-stranger-than-fiction episode."

Debunkers of Doom?by Martin Kottmeyer
"The impression the literature leaves me with is that debunkers,
lumped together as a group, have no bias towards apocalyptic thinking.
Counter-proofs exist and they are prominent. It would be hard to think
of a way to stereotype debunkers that could be more wrong. Or one more
right for ufologists and UFO buffs themselves."

Backscatter:
A Reply by Alexander Mebane to "The Abduction Conundrum"by Greg Sandow" I found Greg Sandow's piece on abduction
explanations quite respectable. My only serious criticisms of that
effort are, first, that he inconsistently shows some sympathy with the
Jungian "endogenous" explanation, and second, that he is so fixated on
the venerable but obsolete "extraterrestrial" idea that his peroration
deals only with arguments (all called "fallacious") against that
explanation. The supernatural alternative (sham "space-visitors") never
comes within his purview--and yet that seems to me to be the only
hypothesis that still remains viable."